Dr. Jeannie Stone recently resigned her position as Superintendent of Richardson ISD. Richardson, Texas is an urban school district just North of Dallas. Stone was voted 2019 Superintendent of the year, and for good reason. Richardson ISD a majority-minority school district, and 56.9% of its students are economically disadvantaged, yet Richardson ISD graduates 91% of its kids.

Dr. Stone first drew the attention of the angry crowd when she stepped up in 2018 and met with student activists who shared tales of racism and discrimination throughout their experience with Richardson ISD. In response, she released a video listing their demands and vowed to keep the list posted on her office door until these demands were met. This alerted some parents who oppose any discussion on race to begin actively opposing her ideas to protect her students of color and focus on providing them the best possible education.

Cue COVID-19. The nationwide trend of angry parents shouting ugly personal attacks at school boards and administrators did not overlook Richardson ISD. Karen Clardy, the RISD board President, abruptly resigned in September. Richardson ISD was one of the first Texas school districts to defy Governor Abbott’s prohibition of mask mandates.

While a majority of parents agreed with the mandate, a loud minority of parents (20%) began a campaign of threats and harassment that led to the resignation of Dr. Stone and Mrs. Clardy. The losers in this situation will be the students, long after the worst of the pandemic is over.

My children attend school in a neighboring district and we have had the same issues at our school board meetings. A student stood to testify that his grandmother had a pre-existing condition and he wanted to protect her from COVID-19. Anti-mask parents stood behind him and laughed, mocking the child for his compassion.

These anti-mask parents haven’t stopped there. Emboldened by their surging numbers and media attention, they’ve now gone after Critical Race Theory. Next, they’re demanding to ban books with any references to sexual activity or transgender individuals being presented in a positive light.

The saying goes “give them an inch, and they’ll take a mile.” The 24/7 right-wing outrage media has expanded its local operation, folks, and Texas is in the thick of it. As an active, engaged, mom – I can tell you that very few people oppose masks, racially accurate curriculum, or support banning books. Those of us that desire reason over manufactured outrage have to start showing up in numbers that rival the angry crowd.

Huh. Well, you can’t just believe everything you read on Twitter. I’m going to fact check this. It is far too ridiculous to assume that this is true. I mean, we all know they’re racists and they know we know that they know we know but they don’t think that we have any real proof because to them it isn’t racist if you don’t say the N word out loud. So they certainly wouldn’t, just a few weeks after Juneteenth, suggest that teachers must not tell their students that the KKK is morally wrong.

Anyway, I found a Huffpost link that links directly to the bill. So here’s the bill, hosted at capitol.texas.gov. 

Sure enough, “the history of white supremacy, including but not limited to the institution of slavery, the eugenics movement, and the Ku Klux Klan, and the ways in which it is morally wrong” is listed under things teachers “may not” do.

Since I started writing, they’ve removed the offensive language. It was absolutely true – they wanted our civics classes to NOT provide the context of racism when discussing the KKK. Which is like trying to discuss the composition of water without mentioning the two Hydrogen atoms.

Left in the bill is something just as ridiculous, just in case you thought this improvement made it better:

 

an individual, by virtue of the individual ’s race or sex, bears responsibility for actions committed in the past by other members of the same race or sex;**

an individual should feel discomfort,
guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress on account of the individual ’s race or sex;

It all comes down to the poor snowflakes who can’t stand to learn the facts: an economic system based on race-based slavery inescapable by birth was perpetrated by people with the same skin color as them. I’m not sure why the state of Texas wants children to be taught that their actions won’t have any impact on future generations since they clearly want to teach that the actions of the past have no effect on our current situation. Generational poverty, racism, and oppression? Naah, throw that out and pull yourself up by your bootstraps!

I find it blatantly hypocritical that they’re giving the teachers the ability to tell children the facts of what happened but forcing them to not talk about any type of shame or guilt that a child might feel over what their ancestors did, and yet they didn’t want those same teachers the room to teach the context of what the racists did and why they did it. This is the same reason half of the deep south believes with all their hearts (bless them) that the civil war was fought over state rights.

Recently, I discovered a newspaper article where my husband’s 3rd great grandfather was named as a stop on the Underground Railroad. I showed the genealogical evidence to my husband and children and they were all proud and happy that they come from a long line of abolitionists. We have no slaveholders in our history. We have no more control over that than anyone else and who they are born to, yet I feel pride in these facts.

Either way, let’s leave education up to the educators and allow them to teach context where it is appropriate.

In the 10th grade, my history teacher taught me that slaves were better off with their “masters” because they had nowhere to go when they were freed. That’s a statement that was missing a LOT of context. Funny that the Texas legislature never made sure teachers didn’t teach that to their students.

Governor Abbott, who is slimier than a bucket of snails, has called a special session of the Texas legislature. It is well within his right to do – as a Texas Governor can call a special session for any reason she wishes just so long as she states a reason. In this case, he has outlined 13 reasons that are so important that the Republican majority legislature failed to pass them in a regular session. I suggest you wipe your rear end with that memo and read my list, because it’s a hell of a lot more honest.

Reasons for calling a special session:

1. Democrats denied the legislature a quorum, and ain’t no way the GOP is gonna accept the fact that they lost a battle. See: Trump 2020 election.
2. He wants to distract from the power grid disasters of 2021 – there is no mention of doing any legislative work on the power grid or ERCOT, despite the fact that it’s the real elephant in the room – even bigger than Allen West running for Governor.
3. Texans must perform genital checks on children playing tee-ball.
4. One-upping his Republican primary opponents Huffines and West by using state funds to build a wall. He never seemed interested in doing so until he was up for re-election against GQP candidates crazier than him.
5. He needs to dog-whistle the racist voters by using the words “Critical race theory.”
6. Make it somehow harder for brown people to vote.
7. – 13. He’s campaigning for re-election. 

We all know that Abbott called this session to rile up his base. In his list of thirteen priorities, there is not one single mention of the energy grid or ERCOT. Notably, there is no mention of vaccines or COVID-19, either, because his base is still pissed off at him for being somewhat responsible and making some businesses reduce capacity or close during a pandemic that killed 52,715 Texans as of today.

Texas Republicans don’t care if you fail at legislating so bad that thousands die unnecessarily from disease or freezing to death, they just want to make sure you can be really mean.

Abbott is doing his damnedest, isn’t he?

God; Guns; Gays; Prayer in Schools; War on Christmas; Politically Correct; Death Tax; Illegals; National Anthem; ACORN; Benghazi; Massive Voter Fraud; Stop the Steal; White Genocide.  These, and dozens of other bumper sticker talking points are all fodder to whip up fake outrage in the base to keep them wound up and angry over non-issues.  The latest is Critical Race Theory.  Virtually unheard of before March of this year, it is now the key topic on Fox Noise, OAN, social media, and Hate Radio all over the country.

What’s going on?  What’s going on is what always goes on…whip up an issue to piss off the base, flog it until it becomes ingrained in conservative DNA, then find another fake issue to piss off the base, flog it until it becomes ingrained in conservative DNA, rinse, repeat.  They use the tactic to drive the base to the polls and for fundraising.

Media Matters has been following these tactics for years and have publish a new review to the Critical Race Theory outrage.  Now, to be clear, Critical Race Theory has been in academia for over 40 years.  It was developed back then, primarily in law schools, including Harvard, to frame the approach to legislation in an effort to understand how racist policies from centuries ago have become ingrained in our laws.  It’s not political and has not been taught in schools to children.  This issue was dredged up as Trump started flogging the fake issue by banning discussions of race in the military and in government agencies call it “sensitivity training” and other pejoratives as part of his campaign in the 2020 election.

To show how these issues are flogged, Media Matters tracks the number of mentions of certain key words.  Here’s their recent tracking of Critical Race Theory on Fox Noise.

Media Matters did a great exposé a couple of years ago about how Bill O’Reilly and Lou Dobbs whipped up the War on Christmas in 2004 which is now resurrected and marched down Bullshit Street every holiday season.  Bullshit is the proper descriptor for all of this, but it’s worse than that.  It’s corrosive and undermines people’s confidence in government, has destroyed all decorum between political ideologies and is a common tactic in totalitarian governments like Russia.  The proliferation of this bullshit makes truth unknowable.  Normally rational people spout said bullshit on social media in a continuous stream, destroying civility between digital and even actual friends.  This is how you get a HUGE proportion of Republicans actually believing Trump is still president and how whites are being systematically eliminated from society.  It’s all bullshit, but it’s also ingrained in the belief systems of millions of Americans.  Even in the face of mountains of evidence to the contrary, people still believe this bullshit.

It’s tragic and seriously threatens our democracy.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Four Star General Mark Milley set right-wingers  in the House straight yesterday when he lashed out at Matt Gaetz and other Republicans who have made Critical Race Theory, a longstanding academic perspective for understanding institutional racism, their flavor of the month to whip up the base.  National Embarrassment of Texas, Dan Crenshaw, and Tom Cotton of Arkansas have used the lie that the military is getting “woke” and soft and set up a “whistleblower” website for active duty military to report “wokeness” in their ranks.  The whole thing is idiotic, and only the uninformed are wound up about it.   Near the end of an Armed Services Committee hearing where Matt Gaetz and others pushed the Woke Lie, General Milley was given an opportunity to respond to their nonsensical assertions, his response was epic and a MUST WATCH.  As of this morning, it’s been watched over 6 million times, just another example of Republicans being their own worst enemies.